Literature Bargain Book Box 22 (18 Books)

Literature Bargain Book Box 22 (18 Books)

A Booker longlisting. A return to Hill House, sanctioned by the Shirley Jackson estate. Sixteen writers including Margaret Atwood reclaiming the words used to insult women.

This box leans toward the ambitious and the unexpected. Gurnaik Johal tracing a lost river across generations. Sigrid Nunez being funny and honest about the same page. Halle Butler at her most acidic. An Icelandic midwife's quiet meditation on birth and weather. A novel about the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition winners, and one about a bookseller at Christmas.

Some of it is warm — Libby Page on friendship, Freya North on growing up, Felicity Hayes-McCoy on festive small-town Ireland. Some of it isn't warm at all. Katherine Min's revenge comedy is exceptionally funny and thoroughly unforgiving.

Books that were reviewed properly, argued about, and remembered.

1. The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne — Freya North | ISBN: 9781802793000 | RRP: $49.99
   An unforgettable coming-of-age story from Freya North, following a girl growing up on the margins of a community that doesn't quite know what to do with her. Warm, perceptive, and quietly devastating in places.
2. Saraswati — Gurnaik Johal | ISBN: 9781788169486 | RRP: $45.00
   Praised by Graham Norton for its extraordinary ambition and scale, this novel follows the sudden reappearance of the mythical Saraswati river and the many lives it disrupts across India. A remarkable, expansive debut novel.
3. Animal Life — Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir | ISBN: 9781782277675 | RRP: $24.99
   An Icelandic midwife reflects on birth, death, weather, and the papers left behind by her great-aunt as a storm closes in on Reykjavík. Quiet, luminous, and utterly distinctive — Ólafsdóttir is one of Iceland's finest living novelists.
4. The Scope of Permissibility — Zeynab Gamieldien | ISBN: 9781761152177 | RRP: $34.99
   A sharp and intelligent Australian debut following three Muslim university students navigating faith, desire, politics, and each other. Zeynab Gamieldien writes about young adulthood with real nuance and refuses easy conclusions.
5. Between Two Worlds — SBS Emerging Writers' Competition | ISBN: 9781743799055 | RRP: $36.99
   An anthology drawn from the SBS Emerging Writers' Competition, gathering new Australian voices writing about identity, migration, and belonging. An excellent way to encounter writers before everyone else does.
6. Monkey Boy — Francisco Goldman | ISBN: 9781611854428 | RRP: $24.99
   A Pulitzer-finalist autofictional novel following a Guatemalan-American writer on a train journey back to Boston and into his own family history. Francisco Goldman writes about identity and inheritance with tremendous honesty.
7. The Fire — Daniela Krien | ISBN: 9781529421408 | RRP: $22.99
   A German novel of quiet devastation, following a long-married couple forced into three weeks alone together after their holiday plans collapse. Daniela Krien examines a marriage with unsparing precision and considerable tenderness.
8. The Bookseller's Gift — Felicity Hayes-McCoy | ISBN: 9781529362107 | RRP: $34.99
   Described by Cathy Kelly as a festive feast of a novel, this warm Irish story centres on a bookshop, a community, and the season when both matter most. Felicity Hayes-McCoy writes small-town Ireland with real affection.
9. All the Little Bird-Hearts — Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow | ISBN: 9781472288042 | RRP: $24.99
   Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023. An autistic single mother in 1980s England watches her daughter drawn into the orbit of glamorous new neighbours. Told in a voice unlike anything else in contemporary fiction — precise, literal, and quietly heartbreaking.
10. A Haunting on the Hill — Elizabeth Hand | ISBN: 9781408729571 | RRP: $49.99
    The first novel authorised by the Shirley Jackson estate to return to Hill House. Elizabeth Hand is a superb and unsettling writer, and she treats the original with the respect and menace it deserves.
11. Banal Nightmare — Halle Butler | ISBN: 9781399618212 | RRP: $49.99
    A woman returns to her Midwestern hometown after a decade in Chicago and finds everyone exactly as insufferable as she remembered. Halle Butler writes contemporary misery with a comic precision nobody else can match.
12. The Lifeline — Libby Page | ISBN: 9781398708457 | RRP: $49.99
    A big-hearted and life-affirming novel about friendship, water, and the ways people keep each other going. From the bestselling author of The Lido — comforting without ever being simplistic.
13. Small Hours — Bobby Palmer | ISBN: 9781035402656 | RRP: $49.99
    From the author of Isaac and the Egg comes another spellbinding novel about family, grief, and the strange things that arrive when a life falls apart. Bobby Palmer writes with real emotional intelligence and a light, surprising touch.
14. The Fetishist — Katherine Min | ISBN: 9780349727936 | RRP: $49.99
    A darkly comic tale of rage and revenge, described by Pandora Sykes as exceptionally funny and frequently sexy. Published posthumously, this is a fierce, unsparing novel about racial fetishisation and the appetite for payback.
15. The Vulnerables — Sigrid Nunez | ISBN: 9780349018119 | RRP: $49.99
    Praised by Paula Hawkins as being as funny as it is painfully honest. A novel of the pandemic featuring a writer, a Gen Z housemate, and a parrot — from the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend.
16. Furies: Stories of the Wicked, Wild and Untamed — Margaret Atwood and others | ISBN: 9780349017143 | RRP: $45.00
    Sixteen bestselling and award-winning authors, including Margaret Atwood, each taking one of the words historically used to demean women and turning it into a story. Fierce, inventive, and consistently excellent.
17. Teddy — Emily Dunlay | ISBN: 9780008669720 | RRP: $34.99
    A glamorous and very sharp debut set in 1969 Rome, following an American diplomat's wife whose past is closing in on the life she's built. Stylish, propulsive, and considerably darker than the surface suggests.
18. No Worries If Not! — Lucy Nichol | ISBN: 9780008558703 | RRP: $22.99
    A funny, relatable novel about work, anxiety, and the endless small compromises of modern professional life. Lucy Nichol writes about mental health with genuine humour and no condescension.